Karen Bolan took an improv quilting class that changed her career from engineering to quilt designer and teacher. She finds inspiration for her designs in her everyday life – everywhere!
Tell us more about your leap to pursue quilting full-time.
Oh gosh, the anxiety! My first career was in civil engineering. I worked for the State, and then a private engineering firm, primarily on drinking water projects.
I started quilting pretty soon after I started working as an engineer. I had considered leaving the field in 2017, when I left my first job, but soon after I got a new job. Fast forward to 2021, and I took a clas, “Adventures in Improv Design” by Anne Sullivan and Melanie Tuazon, about storytelling with improv quilts.
I didn’t know what story I could tell, but I started off thinking about the poem “Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver, and decided my protagonist would be me and the antagonist would be “being good.” I didn’t realize as I started the quilt how it would end up; that’s the nature of improv design.
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Read more about our affiliate linking policy.
When I stepped back after playing with the fabrics, I realized I was telling a story of being stifled by the pressure to “be good” in society. That was one major realization that led me to quit my engineering career three months later.
The resulting quilt, “The Good Story,” may be my most important quilt to date. It was shown at the deYoung Museum in San Francisco, at Pacific International Quilt Festival, and at QuiltCon.
Back to pursuing quilt making full time, it started as an escape from engineering, with all the trepidation that comes along with rejecting a title that provides a certain level of status in today’s world and the income and security that accompany it. Now, four years later, I’m feeling more confident about the shift, and still in awe of the turn my life has taken.
I’m now running my business full time. I teach, lecture, and design patterns. Teaching and lecturing takes me all over the US and the world – virtually and in person! I publish my own patterns on my website but also contribute to magazines occasionally. This shift has been a great adventure, and something I didn’t envision fully until it happened; I didn’t see myself here ten years ago, or even five years ago!
links: https://www.karenbolan.com/lectures-workshops and https://www.karenbolan.com/shop
How did you get started designing quilts? Always an artist, or was there a “moment”?
From the first quilt I made, I started making design decisions. Design is part of the process that keeps me interested, curious, and enjoying myself.
Despite making art, it took a long time to start calling myself an artist. There was so much wrapped up with that term, and it felt like it belonged to someone else.
After winning a Best in Show award at an art (not quilt) show in 2023, I vowed to start calling myself an artist. Not long after, it felt weird again. Then, later in 2023, one of my quilts was accepted to show at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. It felt unreal until the artist’s preview; finally, being around all these creative people who had no qualms calling themselves artists, I felt like the title Artist has stuck.
Where do you find inspiration for your designs?
The world around me, everywhere. In nature, art, music, interactions, feelings, patterns, events, curiosities. It’s annoyingly easy to get distracted from daily life and start designing a quilt.
Do you use a sketchbook, journal, or technology to plan or keep track of ideas? How does that help your work develop?
I sketch things on little pieces of paper, take photos with my phone, and design digitally.
Sometimes a design stems from all three, in various increments, over a sometimes wide range of time.
I keep my photos poorly organized, and my paper scraps even less so, but my digital design files are relatively straightforward and labeled by date, making them easier to cross-reference with a photo if that’s how the design started out.
I have had a lot of design ideas from over the years (hundreds!). When I’m faced with the itch to create something new, I can look back and see if I want to work on something from the past or start fresh.
When it comes to creating, are you more of a planner or an improviser?
That’s a trick question! I’m both.
The engineer side of me is definitely a planner; I design a lot digitally, and like to create many, many, many iterations of each design until I’m happy with it. Sometimes that takes years, and includes every step of the process (I talk all about this side of me in my “Engineer your Quilts” lecture).
The other side of me rebels from that perfectionist-planning enthusiast. I love improv, and find a lot of creative flow in the unplanned process. I also find improv a good way to unearth emotions I have trouble accessing with the other side of me at the helm.
I haven’t done a lot of cross-over; my quilts tend to be either fully planned or fully improv. Maybe someday I’ll meet myself in the middle!
Describe your creative space.
Physical or mental? Haha.
I am lucky to have taken over my entire garage. I recently moved things around and I’m liking the new layout. Once I enter through antique french doors at the back of the garage, my cutting table and fabric storage are on the left and my desk is on the right.
I run my business from the garage too, which is its own kind of creative space. Back to the cutting table, I made it out of Ikea kitchen cabinets. Above the cutting space I have all my fabric (well, not all my fabric) visible, and organized by color in solids and prints.
Next to the cutting table is my sewing machine, “Big Brother.” Big Brother is a Brother Nouvelle 1500s, and I use it for piecing and quilting (free motion and walking foot). Across from the machine, next to my office/desk, is my design wall and ironing board.
Beyond this zone is my longarm, “The Mother Ship.” The Mother Ship is a Gammill Classic, fully manual. I will tell you but not elaborate about the four bookshelves and under-bed storage containers full of books, more fabric, and unfinished projects.
The physical space works well for me because my internal creative space thrives with variety, so I can easily switch between different parts of the process on multiple projects at once. I love it when it’s clean but once I clean up, it immediately seems to disorganize itself without my permission.
When I teach and lecture virtually, the space changes into a video studio. I move my computer from the desk to the cutting table, and set up cameras overhead and in front of Big Brother. It can get pretty messy behind the scenes, but everything on camera looks neat!
Scraps. Saver? Or be done with them?
Ugh, I have too many scraps. They multiply. I have a hard time throwing them away. I organize them by shape, size and color (in that order), but still find it hard to find what I want. I use them mostly when making blocks for other people, and they come in handy for experiments. But mostly, they just multiply.
How often do you start a new project? Do you work actively on more than one project at a time?
I start multiple projects a year, and don’t keep good enough track to say exactly how many. I’ve tried to slow it down in recent years, mostly because my physical space is filling up.
I’m easily distracted and have a lot of unfinished projects in various stages. The projects I’m successful at finishing are usually deadline-driven. I’m pretty responsive to external deadlines. I usually have at least two projects in “active” progress, again mostly because of space limitations. There is only so much room on my design wall and cutting station.
How has your work evolved over the years? Is there a common thread (pun intended!) across the years?
The most common thread over the years has been experimentation and learning. That sometimes makes it hard for me to notice a common thread visually, because I like trying new things all the time.
That said, last year I exhibited 14 of my quilts in a three-person show, Play on Light, in my hometown. We organized and curated the show ourselves, and it gave me a good reason to try to understand my work as a body rather than just a lot of individual pieces.
I tend to love abstraction, color play, and quilting as an integral part of the full story. I’ve tried different ways to go about these themes, but overall most of my work touches on all three in some way.
Can you tell us about the inspiration and process of one of your works? How does a new work come about?
I’m working on a new class right now for QuiltCon next year, all about the design process, so I’ve recently scrutinized my process.
For example, starting with a photo, I look at colors, shapes, and emotions. I’m not always methodical, but I do note all three in various ways. I like to sketch interesting shapes I see, and especially love finding shadows doing interesting things. I might come up with 20-30 sketches of various parts, then refine them by playing with abstracting them into blocks, and playing with different grids and arrangements and color combinations.
I did that with Revolution, starting with a photograph of a Ferris wheel I took at Newport Beach.
Next in the process, I often start digital mockups, further refining and varying my designs. That process, along with any emotional component that stands out, also helps me choose a construction method.
For Revolution, I wanted to express the thrill and fear that can come with Ferris wheels, and carnivals in general, and the feeling of moving quickly. That dynamic led me to choose a piecing design that was both precise and improvised, and a quilting plan that emphasized both the symmetry (stability) of the wheel and the sharpness of the shards (anxiety).
I chose to reverse the color palette with red as the background to fulfill a challenge to use that color, but also because it can be a shockingly emotional color. The jagged edges were not part of the original plan, but I grew attached to them as I was piecing the top, and I liked that they reinforced the danger.
When you have time to create for yourself, what kinds of projects do you make?
I want to answer the part of this question you didn’t ask. Lately, I’ve been creating primarily for my business, and that means developing classes.
Creating a class is a creative design challenge, and one I really enjoy. I love teaching, and I love to find a clever way to get students involved, learning, and actually retaining information.
I put a lot of effort into designing classes to be educational, technical, and fun, with something for every student to learn (the brand new quilters and those who have been doing this longer than I’ve been alive).
I have been making a series of class samples for my Design an Original Modern Quilt class, and I really like where this collection is pushing me.
I’m always inspired by students’ choices in the Piece Curves and Play with Transparencies class (plus, it’s my most photogenic class)!
Learn more about Karen’s classes.
Do you prefer the kind of project that is challenging and requires attention, or the kind where you get in your meditative zone and enjoy the process?
Another trick question! I find myself more easily in the meditative zone while I’m working on a challenge.
One surefire way to get in the zone is to play with color palettes by recoloring my designs; I use digital tools a lot because I enjoy this step so much. I use Affinity Designer and PreQuilt primarily as I’m playing with color.
See coloring pages on PreQuilt: https://app.prequilt.com/market/karenbolan
As I’m considering patterning my quilts, I will use the color tools extensively; if I can “waste” hours changing colors for a quilt and like what I see, I feel the pattern will be successful for other people too.
One quilt I haven’t grown tired of recoloring is Cool as a Cactus. Playing with transparency (and other color illusions) is a good way to get me sucked into the design process for a long time.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received?
As I was struggling with the decision to leave my engineering career, my mom said simply, “This is your life.” Why would I spend my preciously short life struggling to feel alive?
I may regret failing to contribute to my retirement plan, but probably not as much as I’d regret failing to experience life in the meantime.
Do you approach your work differently for entering juried shows?
Not necessarily, but I’ve also stopped making work specifically for shows.
For a while, I was practicing my skills with the hope of entering and winning shows, but I found the pressure took most of the fun away.
I can be a rule follower, so when I work on a specific prescribed challenge, I try to meet all the requirements, even if I don’t enjoy the process.
Where can people see your work?
In my lectures! I lecture for quilt guilds, and that might be the best way to see my work; I share more in a lecture than I do online, and you can see 20-30 quilts of mine in one place. www.karenbolan.com/lectures-workshops
My website! I have a gallery and a (mostly neglected) blog. www.karenbolan.com
Instagram! Also pretty neglected these days but sometimes I try. www.instagram.com/karen.bolan
Some public shows and magazines! I tend to keep the exhibitions and publications on this page updated. https://www.karenbolan.com/about
Interview posted June 2025
Browse through more modern quilt inspiration on Create Whimsy.